Causeway: A Passage From Innocence Read Online Free Page A

replied.
    There was a long silence then as we sat, each waiting for the other to comment.
    Finally he smiled and mouthed: “Q-U-E-E-R.”
    “I know,” I said.
    He recoiled in shock. “You know?”
    “Of course. Everybody knows.”
    “Mhoire mhathair,” he said—“Holy Mother Mary”—as if he suddenly realized that I was a grown-up too.
    The small details of that Saturday would remain clear in the mind for many years to come. They would often cause me to reflect on the perversity of existence, how the truly memorable experiences in life so often pass in what seems like humdrum banality. It’s almost as if life has no substantial meaning except in retrospect. And that’s what makes so much of life so sad—tragic even.
    We went home from the tavern. We ate lightly and in silence. After the lunch I asked my father if I could borrow the Volkswagen—do a bit of visiting, if that’s okay.
    “No problem,” he replied.
    Dennis had obviously been to the liquor store because we were together hardly any time at all when he produced a bottle. After a couple of sips, we toured around looking up old pals from high school. The Hanley boys, Alex MacMaster, the String, whose real name was Duncan MacLellan. It being Saturday afternoon, there was no shortage of drink and talk.
    Dennis was a schoolteacher, just home from Edmonton. His brother, Lewis, was a priest who taught high school in Ottawa, where I saw him frequently. Their father, a miner, had died suddenly the year before. There had been no warning. You’d never have known there was a thing wrong with him. Then one afternoon he went upstairs for a nap and never came down. We talked about that a lot—about unpredictability; about poor old Jock and all the missed opportunities.
    “Dan Rory looks great, though,” Dennis said.
    And I agreed.
    “How old was your grandfather when he went…When was it?”
    “Last year,” I said. “He was ninety-five.”
    “Wow. And the old lady, your grandma. I hear she’s still going strong. And she must be, what?”
    “Heading for ninety-five herself,” I replied, strangely awed and reassured by the longevity in my family.
    “Poor old Jock,” Dennis said, shaking his head sadly. “He was only fifty-five. Had his birthday June 24 last year. Died in September.”
    “June 24,” I said. “What a coincidence. My old man turned fifty June 23 just past.”
    “Here’s to them,” said Dennis.
    He uncapped the bottle and passed it over.
    Later Dennis wanted to know everything about working in Ottawa, on Parliament Hill. What that must be like, especially covering something as arcane as the economy.
    That conversation later went off the rails when I bogged down, after too many drinks, attempting to explain the relationship between the trade deficit, inflation, and the interest rate. I recovered some of my credibility by boasting that my guest for the Press Gallery Dinner the previous spring had been the governor of the Bank of Canada, Louis J. Rasminsky—a hell of a nice down-to-earth old mandarin who loved a drink as much as the next fella.
    It was around then that I noticed the deepening chill in the air and the coppery glow behind the trees and realized that the sun was going down rapidly. It was probably time to go home. Put in a little quality time with the parents, since I was around for just the weekend, and Saturday was almost gone already.
    “One more little one,” Dennis insisted.
    Driving by the Troy trailer court I remembered hearing that my friend Jack, who was one of the four Hanley brothers, was living there and that he and his wife, Jessie, recently had their first kid—a boy. On an impulse I turned in. Just a quick visit with old Dag, which was what the boys used to call Jack at home.
    Jessie was cooking supper, and they insisted I have a bite with them.
    After supper there were drinks and long conversations.
    I met the new baby, and we compared notes about the trials of parenthood. Jessie eventually went to